Facebook to trim advert categories aimed at 'anti-Semites'

Researchers at ProPublica found several ad categories for people who had declared that they "Hated" Jews. Facebook said its algorithms automatically created the categories when analysing user interests. The ProPublica researchers found the anti-Jewish categories while conducting a larger investigation into the way Facebook targets adverts at users. ProPublica said it had to use several categories because Facebook would not let it buy adverts for the small number of users who had described themselves as being anti-Semitic. The data informing the advertising categories on Facebook was generated automatically, said the ProPublica reporters, and was created from content people explicitly shared on the site as well as by what they revealed via their activity.